The Talker. Mary Sojourner

left behind. I caught on quick and brought the two phantom adulterers into almost every conversation—into our gossip, our longings, our shyness and the earnest chaos of our lives.

      We knew the names of Tessa’s three kids and how the littlest, Scheyenne, had nearly caught Tessa and Duane going at it one August afternoon. We judged the real hubby as mean and dumb and cowardly. We knew that Duane had an ex-wife who’d taken his kid, the house, the 1989 Mustang, two-thirds of his pay and everything else but his good heart and slow hand. I told Ben a few things he didn’t know: how Tessa hated her stretch marks, how sometimes she’d do that binge and throw up routine, how she worried about Duane’s tendency to polish off a six-pack most every night. Ben said Duane liked women with a little flesh on them and saw stretch marks as medals of honor. As for the booze, Duane was definitely on top of it.

      The night everything changed for me and Ben, he was asleep at the baker’s table. I finished wiping down the prep area and went to drop his jacket over his shoulders. He reached up, tugged me down and kissed me stoned and sweet. His mouth tasted of Beaujolais and dope, and his curls felt exactly as I’d known they would, soft as a kid’s, clean and feathery under my fingers. We were hanging on to each other with a fierce saved-from-drowning hug when Felice and Stu barged in through the back door.

      “Holy moley,” she said, “who died?”

      “Wait,” Stu said. He was elegant and black and he despised most humans, of all races and sexual persuasions alike.

      “They’re sharing,” he said, “deeply, personally, warmly.” He touched the tops of our heads. “Bless you,” he said. “Be blissful, at least for a week, y’all.”

      “Be nice,” Felice said. She lifted a bottle of Moet out of the cooler.

      “Unh, unh, unh,” Stu said. “You’re a very naughty girl this evening and I don’t mind if I do.”

      Felice uncorked the Moet so smoothly you would have thought it was Chablis. Ben had buried his face in my collarbone. He didn’t move. I wondered for a long second if he had died. His hair smelled like rain, which didn’t make any sense, but made me like him even more—which worried me almost as much as the fact that I wanted to shield him from the dazzling duo. And everything else. I wanted to kiss, talk, breath and love the sadness out of his seaweed eyes.

      “You are fucked up, kids,” Stu said cheerfully.

      “You’re in wuv,” Felice said. She raised the Moet in a toast. I wanted to smack her, but I didn’t want to let go of Ben. He was breathing so gently and evenly against my shoulder that I guessed he had passed out.

      “No,” I said, “it’s family troubles. His cousin Tessa up in Chandler, you know.” I felt a soft snort against my shoulder. “Bad marriage. You guys know how that can be.” I lowered my eyes.

      “When will you lambies ever learn?” Stu said to the ceiling.

      “Come on, preacher,” Felice said. “We’re outta here.” She piled some hot peppers on a plate and headed for the door.

      Stu paused. “You can share with Uncle Stu,” he said.

      I shook my head. “Some things,” I said, “are just family.” He handed me the Moet and watched me take a good chug.

      “Easy does it,” he said, lifted the bottle from my hand and was gone.

      I drove us to my place, guided Ben into my room, dumped the books and magazines off the bed and unsnapped the hundred snaps on the green shirt. He glided his wise mouth down my body and I rose up like a wave. I coiled up and over more times than I can bear to remember now. I took him with me, and Tessa and Duane and all the world’s renegade sweethearts and cast us up on some warm shoreline, where the two of us wiped ourselves dry with the beautiful shirt and fell asleep.

      Morning was weird. First, there is always the hangover; second, we had to face what we’d done and with whom; third, we had to say how many before, how AC/DC, how drugged out and deadly; fourth, I could not remember his last name.

      “I never told you,” he said. “Look, it’s all going to be uphill from here. You make some coffee, look out a window, cry a little and come back. I’ll be here.” I did what he’d suggested, then put plates out and burned a couple of English muffins. We ate them with a jar of peach jam he foraged out of the back of the cupboard. He took my hand and led me back to bed and soon I wasn’t sad anymore.

      We had it easy for a while. Easy is a dangerous way to think. We let Tessa and Duane tell our stories and get us over the rough spots. Tessa’s husband went on the road for a week and Duane cut back to three beers a day. Tessa wondered how the future might be. Duane admitted he was scared about what would happen when he was too old to do the work he did. They had their first fight, an incandescent flare-up about something they wouldn’t remember later. One midnight, they decided to go out and steal olives from the trees around the parking lot of one of the country’s biggest and meanest banks.

      So did we. Ben wore his new bandito shirt that I’d found in a little second-hand store on Speedway. The shirt was black with moon-silver snaps, and scarlet roses satin-stitched on the pockets. Even though it sparkled under the parking lot security lamps and we made a stunning amount of noise for two quiet people, nobody saw us. Ben figured we came home with enough olives to restore Coyote’s reputation for six months.

      Next morning, when Felice came into the kitchen, Ben said, “We’ve got us a passel of olives, boss.”

      She shook her head. “You win. I’ll try them. If I like them I’ll sell Stu on the idea and he’ll intimidate the big dogs into featuring them.”

      You couldn’t put up olives in a motel room, so Ben moved in with me. He hung his shirts in my closet and laughed at my suggestion that he bunk in the living room. “Why would I want to sleep alone?” he asked. “I’ve done it for twenty years, including the fifteen I was married.”

      “Guys,” I said. “Space.”

      “I’m not that kind of guy. I need space, I’ll let you know.”

      We bought hot pepper flakes and garlic and borrowed a few real hot peppers from our neighbor’s garden. Ben hunted through his suitcase for his old man’s recipe. It wasn’t there. That evening after work, we sat on Coyote’s parking lot wall while Ben fired up a bowl and held forth. “Those olives are going to put Coyote on the map. We’ll take a little road trip up to Flagstaff and get my stuff out of storage. The recipe’s got to be there. Bon Appétit feature story, here we come. Besides, sweetpea, we need a break from this.”

      He waved around at “this,” which was air so hot it seemed white, like a blowtorch blast in your throat. Next day we asked Felice for a three-day mid-week weekend and she agreed. She was agreeing to anything. There was a fling going on with the boss. He was abruptly generous. At closing, we’d find white lines of gratitude on the mirrored top of the employee bathroom sink.

      “I do not know what’s going on,” Stu said. “It’s absolutely a fantasy d’amour around here.” Even he was flinging, the flingee being a scarily handsome bus boy named Squeeze, who wore a tiny silver lizard in his ear and was steadily cheerful—without chemicals. “It’s a mystery,” Stu said. “At first I thought he was doing that dreary one day at a time thing, but he’s not. He’s just an angel.” He closed his eyes and sighed.

      “Good thing,” I said, “him being angelic. Seeing how you hate mortals.”

      “A brief reprieve, I’m sure,” Stu said and kissed me on the cheek. He set his hands on his hips. “Now listen, girlfriend. It’s all a little too rosy here. You two be careful on your little vacation.” He unlooped the silk cord and crystal from around his neck and draped it around mine. “I don’t believe in these New Agey things,” he said, “but these are strange times. We mortals need all the help we can get.”

      Ben and I left before Tuesday dawn in his primer-patched old Bronco and headed up Route 87. “Here’s to the road,” Ben said. “Here’s to freedom.” He